The Department of Justice alleges that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) funneled millions of dollars to members and associates of the Ku Klux Klan and other such outfits through fictitious groups and by relying on prepaid gift cards to hide the money.
It all recalls revelations that the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) euthanized thousands of dogs and cats housed in its shelters.
The SPLC rationalized the payments as a way of infiltrating hate groups. The Justice Department alleges that one of the SPLC’s paid haters helped organize the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville that resulted in a death. The fraud indictment alleges that the SPLC manufactured the extremism that they purport to fight.
The scheme that relied on covert operatives resembles one used by the Anti-Defamation League against the John Birch Society during the 1960s. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche accuses the SPLC of “not dismantling extremism but funding it.”
